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26 Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 1 (2024-2025)

handle is hein.journals/cstlr26 and id is 1 raw text is: Datalnfrastructure as Court Architecture THE COLUMBIA SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LAWREVIEW VOLUME XXVI STLR.ORG FALL 2024 ARTICLE DATA INFRASTRUCTURE AS COURT ARCHITECTURE Kat Albrecht* Whether courts like it or not, digital legal data has become an important part of both litigation andjustice administration. Constitutionally protected as public records, court data and court-adjacent data must be made transparent and accessible to the generalpublic. However, alongside considerations ofhow to make court data accessible externally, so must we also consider how court data is situated internally within courts. Conceptualizing data infrastructure as court architecture reframes the importance of court data to better align with its current utility in courts, while privileging the very real structural issues that courts must contend with to ensure the continued health of data systems. This Article considers the usefulness of data in the current terrain of law and justice, evaluates the ecosystem of data products currently at play in all levels of courts, and offers concrete pathways to data infrastructure development through Open Knowledge Networks. I. IN TR O D U C TIO N ............................................................................................ . 2 II. THE UTILITY OF DATA AND THE DEMANDS OF DATA SYSTEMS................... 3 A. Access to Data as Access to Justice.................................................... 3 B. How Data Availability Constrains Knowledge................................... 5 * Kat Albrecht is an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. She received her JD and PhD degrees from Northwestern University and the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. At the time of this writing, she was also a fellow with Georgetown University Law Center's Judicial Innovation Fellowship embedded within the Hamilton County, Tennessee General Sessions Courts and an MFA student at the University of Georgia. The author is grateful to the employees of the Hamilton County, Tennessee, General Sessions courts, from whom she learned a great deal about what it means to be a court within a community. She is also appreciative of the feedback and support from her cohort of Georgetown Judicial Innovation Fellows Verenice Ramirez and Emily Lippolis. 2024] 1